Because of the very high costs associated with the rental and running of drilling rigs more and more effort is being expended on finding ways to reduce the time consumed by each operation. The present invention is concerned with transporting and running tubulars, for example drill pipe, casing or similar drilling components.
By way of example, during the construction of oil and gas wells a hole is drilled in the ground. Tubulars, such as casing, is then lowered down the hole and the annular space between the hole and the bore filled with cement. The tubulars like casing are heavy, difficult to transport and challenging to maneuver without harm to humans on the drill rig. There has long been needed to have a system, which improves the safety on a rig while handling tubulars.
Conventional tubulars, like casing are run by raising the traveling block of a drilling rig to near its highest position, swinging a length of casing into position below the traveling block, attaching the traveling block to the casing and lowering the casing into the hole. When the traveling block reaches the bottom of its travel, slips are applied to the casing to hold it in position. The traveling block is then disconnected from the casing, raised again to near its highest position and a new length of casing maneuvered into position, attached to the traveling block and screwed into the casing held in the slips.
The traveling block is then raised slightly to lift the entire casing string and allow the slips to be released and then lowered until the traveling block reaches the lowest position wherefore the slips are applied and the process repeated. This multi-step process is costly in time and not efficient.
In order to help overcome many of the problems with this process it has been proposed to provide a transportable container which can be formed into an assembly to hold tubulars in close proximity to the well center.